Sheer Luminescence
by LondonBelow
Summary: The tale of Benny and Alison's wedding, and how it did not go according to plan. RogerApril, BennyAlison, Mark
1. Alison

This is my entry for Challenge 10, "I always cry at weddings", at rentfichallenge. It's a livejournal community. Check it out, it's awesome.

Disclaimer: you all know it's Mr. Larson's

**Alison**

The wedding would transcend perfection. Its sheer luminescence would slip into picturesque. In ten or fifteen years they would look over the album, show it to their children, coo and melt and make love. In a decade and a half they would be characterized by socks in bed, hidden laughter and a faint sense of wine.

At least, that was the idea. Alison's idea. The images flittered through her mind as she arranged the ceremony. Over and over in her mind she rehearsed every detail. They would marry in the park – the white endura-plastic folding chairs here and the priest-and-happy-couple arrangement here in front of the sycamores. Then here the tables and her father would want to make a toast and probably Benny's best man – one of his friends – and he would kissed her and she would cry, and she would pull him away to the weeping willow by the merry-go-round and get grass stains on her beautiful white dress. But that was right. A wedding dress should only be worn once.

The night before the wedding, Alison barely slept. At three a.m. she gave up trying. Through a dark house she shuffled, muffling footsteps in thick carpeting. The light clicked softly and whirred as she brushed her teeth, spat, and rinsed her mouth. The light clicked softly off, there was a shuffling, and Alison was in her bedroom once more.

She sat on the bed. The mattress bounced her. She undid her braid and shook out her hair. And that was what she did for the next hour. She brushed her hair. And she brushed it again and again, until it shone, until strands rose, separated and burned with static.

When her mother woke her at seven, Alison was clutching her hairbrush. Her last night as a single woman. Mrs. Grey immediately jumped to the wrong conclusions. She fetched a spare brush and said nothing.

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	2. April

Disclaimer: you all know it's Mr. Larson's

**April**

They were due at the wedding at ten o'clock. At half past eight, April Wilson was awake and lying in bed, smiling. Her usual smile changed her entire face, lifting her brow as her eyes widened and brightened. It was the sort of smile that sounded like laughing.

That was not the smile April was smiling now. Her usual smile was the smile of a little girl about to ride the carousel. April however was not about to ride the carousel, and she was wearing a very different smile. She sported the smile of a young women being ridden, and not at all like a carousel.

She moaned and arched her back. "God that's good, Roger," she said quickly, slightly breathless.

Without her contacts in, Roger was just a blurred mass bobbing rhythmically above her. That was how she liked sex, totally anonymous—as long as it was with Roger. But she didn't need to see him to know who was in her, nor did she need to hear him, which was just as well. He was quiet as a monk when they did this, every time, except a strangled sort of moan when he orgasmed. April was used to it. Still, she preferred to think of him as he usually was – beautiful – rather than with the focused, vaguely constipated expression he wore mid-coitus.

Roger Davis just wasn't that good at sex.

Well, he was ok, you know, with the physical parts of it. April had never failed to orgasm from his attentions. She made it work. Roger got his rocks off like he was taking a calculus exam. April thought not about the person above her, except the part inside her, occasionally giving a direction but usually just enjoying the warm fullness it gave her.

April moaned. She tossed her head to the side. She was so close. Her muscles clenched with the effort of holding back. If she came first, it made him soft. Roger had never complained about this, but she hated the feeling of him going limp inside her. So she waited for that strangled moan, then—

"Aaah!"

He pulled out immediately after coming. She hated that. He dripped onto her thigh, and she'd have that sense of sticky Rogerness there all day. Even as he laid down beside her and her instinct was to focus on his arm across her chest, the heavy comfort, she was thinking about her leg.

A few minutes later a knock came at the door. "Guys?" It was Mark, sounded awkward and choked. "Um, Benny's here and… he's gonna give us a ride to his wedding. So, um… yeah… try to get ready, ok?"

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	3. Benny

Disclaimer: you all know it's Mr. Larson's

**Benny**

The wedding ceremony went beautifully after one major hitch: it rained. Alison stood there under an umbrella, wearing a long coat so I didn't see her before the wedding bit of the wedding.

"We could hold umbrellas," I suggested. Makes sense to me. Raining, umbrellas. Yes? But they all looked at me like I was crazy. The strange thing is, none of them had any counter-suggestions. The entire Grey clan was trying to comfort Alison.

_Don't jump all at once, now._

"Well, how about some sort of tent?" I suggested.

One of the Grey uncles gave me a nasty look. "We are _not_ Jews," he informed me acidly, and suddenly I wondered how to break the news to Mark and Roger. Mark's name was a dead giveaway and I didn't trust Roger to keep it in his pants.

But more importantly… how were we going to marry outdoors in the rain?

The Greys discussed this while I stood by, them clustered together and me apart, feeling like an intruder. They held aloft funereal black umbrellas and seemed unable to come up with any solution whatsoever. No umbrellas, no tents, seemed to me we should just get married in the rain.

I glanced across the park. Mark, Roger, April, Collins and Maureen were huddled under the small overhang outside the bathroom. Something glowed faintly red. They were chain-smoking. Their bodies convulsed, clearly with laughter, and I felt ill. I wanted so badly to be with them. A puff of marijuana would sure make this day so much easier…

Just when I thought this day couldn't get any worse, a wet mass came bounding through the rain, woofing. It skidded to a halt nearby. The dog planted her legs wide apart, snuffled, and shook.

I brushed off my jacket. "I thought the dog was staying in the car?"

She barked and started nuzzling my crotch. I shoved her away.

Alison smiled. "She wants to come to the wedding. Don't you, sweetie?" she asked, and scratched the mutt's ears.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

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	4. Roger

Disclaimer: RENT is Jonathan Larson's.

**Roger**

April looked beautiful. Stunning, really; she was the prettiest girl at the wedding. Looked way better than Alison, who was too thin by half and her eyes flamed red from crying. Not April, though. April was… a vision, wearing a slouchy navy dress and a black sweater, making her hair and her eyes even brighter. And her lips. Oh, god, her lips.

In our bedroom that morning she gave him a flash of her dress without the sweater. She wasn't wearing a bra, so her breasts just hung, full and heavy and buoyant and incredibly sexy. (By the time he had finished celebrating with himself reveling in her beauty, they were late).

It bummed him out, though, because he kept remembering his mother's wedding. His little sister had been seven, maybe eight, wearing all black with red high-top sneakers. So cute. It was her second marriage, so his mom didn't wear white. Alison wore weight. Roger's mom, though, wore the world's lightest shade of blue, and she looked splendid and happy in that dress because she knew she was beautiful.

Anyway, that whole time Roger just kept thinking about his mom's wedding, especially when Benny had to move the ceremony to the covered picnic area and there were plastic climbing gyms and swings in the background of the ceremony. In the transition between ceremony and reception, Roger needed to slip away. He just needed one—a little bit. He just needed a dab, just to get him through the next few hours.

"Roger?"

She had followed him. They were just far enough away to avoid being heard. "Please, Roger… not today. For Benny?"

Roger hunched his shoulders. "It's just on, 'Ril. I just need a little one."

She trembled slightly, because she knew. These arguments always ended the same. She begged and tried to argue, and Roger lost his temper and he showed her the scars she couldn't stand to see and Jesus Christ, April, you weren't there, you don't know, but just listen please Roger please listen to me, god dammit April, you just don't know!

He made her feel like a spoiled little brat. A privileged ignoramus.

This time she just nodded. _You love smack more than you love me, Roger._ "Just a little one, then," she said softly, and he didn't know what it was in her tone that made him hate himself.

Fucking bitch.

When the time for the toast came, Benny scanned the crowd for his best man, but Roger was off somewhere getting too high to care. So Mark reached into the pocket of a leather jacket that didn't fit him because it didn't _belong_ to him, and he read the words off a neatly folded piece of paper.

_Friends, Romans, countrymen, I come to see Benny married… no, seriously. It's my job to make sure he doesn't duck out at the last minute. [pause for laughter_ (had Roger been reading there would have been some) _I met Benny just over a year ago, when he moved into the bedroom opposite mine. He was different then. He was younger, very idealistic, and most noticeably of all he had hair. He was also a business major, and I worried that this new friend had no purpose but to grub for money. This concern worsened when he took a job employing said major. Then… one day we were walking through the park and we saw a group of thugs beating up a homeless kid. Benny took out his wallet and told the thugs he would give them one hundred dollars to leave the kid alone. That was serious cash for us, but he gave it up to help someone who needed it. That's when I knew he was a good man. Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; and, sure, he is an honorable man._

But coming from Mark, it just sounded stupid. He quoted Shakespeare like an eleven-year-old talking about blowjobs; he blushed and stammered at the mentions of money. Benny raised his glass appreciatively, but even Mark saw the pity in that little gesture.

_to be continued!_

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	5. Alison GreyCoffin

Disclaimer: you all know it's Mr. Larson's

**Alison**

It was awful. Her family hated Benny. Except of course her dog, who loved him, her good, faithful Evita. Benny looked stiff and uncomfortable, and looked most importantly away from her.

Nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to Alison. She decided to excuse herself to the restroom, but no one questioned her when she rose. No one even looked up. She stepped out into the rain and began to run. At first she ran to avoid then rain, but then, then she ran because it felt so good. Her delicate hairstyle collapsed and clustered in a frizzy, bushy fall around her shoulders and upper back. Her high heeled shoes came off, and mud caked her feet.

Alison Grey-Coffin (Grey Coffin, what an unfortunate juxtaposition. I shall want one when I die, she thought.) ran through the park until her feet pattered across nubbly cement. Then she slipped into the bathroom.

Someone had chosen this hideout already. Alison heard sobs before seeing the woman, girl really. Someone – one of Benny's friends – was crouched in the corner of the stall. Her fingers just couldn't keep on her flimsy black sweater, and as she sobbed and rocked her breasts swished hypnotically against the front of her dress.

Alison felt her throat tighten. This young woman was beautiful. She realized she was more attracted at this moment to a practical stranger than to her husband of all of fifteen minutes. (Given the luck of _that_ the girl was probably Jewish. Wouldn't Mum and Daddy just love it!) But she couldn't help it. This woman was beautiful. Sheer luminescence.

Alison reached for her purse. She groped through it for her disposable camera and, before she could help herself, took a picture.

Only then could she force herself to look at the girl's face. It was streaked with black lines from smeared mascara.

"Hey… are you okay?" Alison asked.

April looked up. "Hm?" She wiped her smeared, snotty, wet face on the back of her hand. "Oh. Yeah." She forced a tight smile. "I always cry at weddings," she explained.

Alison smiled, the way she felt she, as the bride of the wedding in question, should. But the smile was a sad failure, tinged with a weak wish for her dream wedding. That would have made her mother cry.

"Yeah," she said, casting her dry-eyed gaze once more over the poor girl. "Me, too."

_the end_


End file.
